Institute of Women’s Studies/ Birzeit University, Palestine

The 7th conference- March 29, 2016

Struggles for Freedom

The Palestinian resistance movement and the North American Indigenous, Black and Brown liberation struggles pose radical challenges to the normative meaning of ‘freedom’. All of these liberation movements struggled for freedom and dignity not in the legalized and institutionalized sense for in their most parts their ways and strategies have been criminalized. Yet, this very subjugation through criminalization of their actions/presence, necessitated that the freedom they struggled for would be other than that granted by the Law. Criminalized, vilified and labelled as terrorists, Palestinian, Indigenous and other 3rd World liberation movementsalready had the freedom of which recognized “independent” nations are now deprived -- the freedom of those who take the risk and are willing to rebel beyond any set limits. As such, imprisonment and death became integral parts of their freedom struggles as well as the creation of an alternative way of life that is real and theirs.

This one-day conference seeks to discuss shared dimensions of the Palestinian, Indigenous and other 3rd World liberation struggles against settler colonial regimes. It aims to examine not only shared experiences and mechanisms of subjugation but also strategies of resistance including organizational structures and the formation of communities of resistance. The conference provides a comparative approach for the Indigenous, Black and Puerto Rican Liberation movements in the United States and the anti-colonial resistance movement in Palestine. It explores the dynamics of subjugation employed by colonial/racist powers as well as the acts of resistance deployed by Natives, Blacks, Latino/as and Palestinians in their freedom struggles.